1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an optical calculating apparatus in which a material for example a liquid crystal is employed and the transmission amount and/or transmission direction of transmitted light are controlled so that a filter operation, a fuzzy operation or the like wherein coefficients are prefixed is performed by controlling light.
2. Description of the Related Art
A typical device for modulating incident light and utilizing transmitted light which has been modulated is a liquid crystal display device. In a liquid crystal display device, transparent electrodes are formed on a pair of glass substrates, a liquid crystal layer is sandwiched between the glass substrates, and a polarizing plate is disposed outside the glass substrates. In accordance with the strength of an electric field applied between the electrodes, the transmittance and interruption of light incident on the liquid crystal display device are switched over.
Such a liquid crystal display device is used literally as a display device for viewing transmitted light, or in a system wherein transmitted light from the liquid crystal display device is irradiated on a photosensitive layer having an electric conductivity which varies according to the amount of incident light and a latent image is formed on the photosensitive layer, thereby obtaining a print output. In the latter case, the liquid crystal display device functions as a so-called liquid crystal shutter.
When a plurality of liquid crystal panels are used in these examples of the prior art, these liquid crystal panels are arranged in parallel with respect to the propagation direction of light. The series arrangement of liquid crystal panels is employed only in a special case such as that they are used to compensate the color formation when obtaining a predetermined color. Namely, such an optical output which has passed through or reflected from a device for modulating incident light is used only in the form of a display or printed matter, and is not used to realize the function of performing any kind of computation or operation in the device.
When a plurality of liquid crystal panels are arranged in series with respect to the propagation direction of light and the modulation state for incident light of each liquid crystal panel is previously set, an optical output in the case that an incident light is given can be obtained very rapidly. Moreover, it is possible to perform optical operations of this kind in parallel. Namely, it has been desired to develop a configuration in which operations are performed using such a device for modulating incident light.